Mungyeong Catholic Church

History & origins

Mungyeong Parish was established on December 7, 1958, as one of the new parishes of the Waegwan Apostolic Vicariate. Sources from the Diocese of Andong and the Catholic directory of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea agree on this date. Benedictine Fr. Ernst Siebertz served as the first pastor and at the same time helped care for the Gaeun area, carrying out missionary work that took him between Mungyeong, Gaeun, and numerous mission stations.

In the difficult years after the war, diocesan material says that Fr. Siebertz distributed relief supplies received from abroad without distinction between Catholics and non-Catholics. He traveled across the wide region by motorcycle and an old jeep, and a diocesan account records that the Catholic population grew from about 700 when he began caring for the Mungyeong area in 1957 to 2,250 four years later. These early efforts helped create a parish-centered framework linking scattered rural communities and mission stations.

After the Diocese of Andong was established in May 1969, Mungyeong Parish became part of the new diocese as a parish serving the Mungyeong area. Even after the change in diocesan structure, the parish continued to stand at the center of nearby mission stations and the region’s martyr heritage. Its early history provides a glimpse of evangelization in northern areas of the Diocese of Andong, where postwar missionary work, relief activity, and pastoral care across a broad rural territory went hand in hand.